How big are these space rocks?
A photo of a lunar crater, measuring about 600 feet across, captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Thankfully, the astronauts weren't in too much danger, according to Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama."The odds of an astronaut being hit by a millimeter-sized object is like 1 in 1 million per hour per person," Cooke told Live Science.
For impactors smaller than a millimeter, the number cannot be precisely quantified, but Cooke estimates that 11 to 1,100 tons — the mass of about 5.5 cars — of dust collide with the moon per day. For larger rocks, the estimates are clearer.
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